Presidential candidates usually have very little to say about infrastructure. But 2016 has been an atypical election in most respects and so is the conversation about national infrastructure investment that has been kick-started by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both the Democratic and Republican presidential contenders have pledged to begin much-needed work on the country’s decrepit infrastructure assets, especially in transportation, a sector that affects the daily lives of every American. They have proposed steering massive amounts of federal dollars into nation’s roads, bridges, and airports, and current interest rates are very low which helps make the case for debt financing to get major projects moving. Emil Frankel, a senior fellow at the ENO Center for Transportation, considered what the two candidates have had to say about infrastructure investment and more broadly on issues like raising the federal fuel tax and how to persuade American voters that major, multi...

Today David Plouffe jets around the country as the chief advisor for the ride-sharing service Uber, but eight years ago he was campaign manager for Barack Obama, the little-known Illinois senator who came out of nowhere to wrest the presidency away from Hillary Clinton. He went onto serve as one of President Obama’s senior advisors. Callie Crossley of WGBH Boston interviewed Plouffe at the recent National Association of Black Journalists/National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in Washington where he shared his thoughts on the state of play in the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What follows is an edited and condensed version of the Crossley-Plouffe interview. Callie Crossley: What do you see happening in the Trump and Clinton campaigns? David Plouffe: This is one of the more interesting elections that we’ve gone through day to day. This is just my observation: Hillary Clinton is going to win. The question is: Is it by three points or seven...

Passengers who often face discrimination when trying to hail a taxi can turn to ride-sharing apps. Was that just an accident, or will those companies work to better serve low-income and minority areas?

For a person of color, Uber’s appeal is simple: If you tap it, they will come. The ride-sharing service brought new mobility options to people in transportation deserts like Crenshaw in Los Angeles, Anacostia in D.C., and the South Side of Chicago, easing the stress of getting around a major metro area. But is Uber’s appeal in minority communities an “ unintended consequence ” or the natural byproduct of a savvy marketing strategy? Davie Plouffe, a former Obama administration senior adviser and now a chief adviser for Uber, tackled this and other conundrums during a Thursday interview session at the National Association of Black Journalists/National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference in Washington. During his conversation with Callie Crossley of WGBH Boston, Plouffe admitted, not surprisingly, that Uber’s founders did not sit down with grand plans to connect underserved neighborhoods to major city centers. But Uber and its competitor Lyft have...

ASSOCIATED PRESS Traffic moves slowly across the Tappan Zee Bridge while construction continues on the new span. Nyack, N.Y., Wednesday, July 20, 2016. One thing that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump can agree on is that America’s infrastructure is an embarrassment. That neglect is on full display in the nation’s capital, where a subway network that dazzled the country when it opened 40 years ago now slogs through an aggressive, federally-imposed schedule of maintenance and repairs. What do the two presidential candidates plan to do about the country’s trillion-dollar infrastructure maintenance backlog? In her Thursday night address, Clinton vowed, if elected, to kick-start some of the biggest infrastructure investment proposals since World War II during her first 100 days in office. She also touts a $275 billion infrastructure plan that includes a national infrastructure bank. As he has with most major issues, Donald Trump provides few details or specifics beyond...

Oklahoma City’s Republican Mayor, Mick Cornett, can stop waiting for Donald Trump to deliver an urban policy briefing—or even to answer his phone. In an alternate universe, the Republican presidential nominee would have courted Cornett, the current president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, along with other GOP mayors in Cleveland, for for a long-overdue conversation about American cities. Cornett has been trying to meet up with the now-official GOP nominee for weeks. But Cornett is looking for leadership in all the wrong places. The man who could be the next president of the United States hasn’t shown any interest getting in touch with him. Perhaps that’s why Cornett devoted his brief Monday afternoon convention address to the topic of the “growing force” of Republican mayors. Their numbers are still modest; of the 500 largest cities in the U.S., only about 150 of them—including San Diego, Anaheim, Albuquerque, Jacksonville, and Fort Worth...